So here it all begins

My brain is such a mess

The walls draw me in

With a song of slumber

To close my eyes and 

Forget about my job

So just sleep and wait

I can’t remember the last time that
My bathroom mirror wasn’t a funhouse mirror
Distorting my perception and twisting my spine
The distant laughter of children ringing in my ears

I’ve built a tenuous identity on the edge of a cliff
Tiptoeing my way along a crumbling slope and
Plugging my ears to ignore the rocks disintegrating
Beneath my size-14 shoes with no arch support

I have no belief that I have any good left in me
Maybe I had a finite amount of being good at something
A jar full of self-belief that I was given the day I was born
My doctor told me to ration it out, it had to last me my life
I didn’t listen. Gifted kid, huge scoop. Musician, huge scoop.

So now I clutch an empty jar like a life preserver
Floating along in a blue-black ocean
Hoping that someone will pick me up or
Hoping that the jar will drag me down with it

I came here the first time that my heart
Transformed into plutonium, agonizingly
Heavy and ready to explode

I miss everyone that used to know who I was
The people that would look through me like
I was a cadaver on display, my skin replaced
With transparent plastic and a protective coating

Those are my footsteps in the sand
My shoes floating out past where the waves break
When I would come here and dance in the shallows
I realized that I didn’t need my plutonium heart
I could render it inert and then refill it with what it was missing
Life, blood, energy, passion, power

The beats fell in perfect rhythm with the waves
A pounding that shook through my being
And made me something more and something less

So here it is, my true self
He is offshore, fled from my body
Swimming unceasingly towards
Whatever he will find

At least I don’t have to pretend anymore
I know what I feel for the person next to me
Not love but obligation and fear of my pain
There is nothing swelling in my chest as I
Stare into the rising sun, just graveyard ash
Mixing in with the dust lingering in the morning light

I was told to stay by the whining voice in my head
Why does it only speak when I’m trying to ignore
Truth? The Lucifer of the Morning. He seduces me
With a sly tongue, quick and dexterous, as he tells
Me that I am wrong and cowardly and I need to stay

So I roll back over and go to sleep, my arms snaked
Around one who I don’t want to be with and I sleep
With the peace of a man who knows he is a liar

I lay on my side, trying to get my aching shoulders to relax
I relax my jaw, trying to release the tension from my day
I still my mind, trying to calm the California freeway of my thoughts
I close my eyes, trying to shut out the spotlight from my neighbor
I am finally comfortable

But now my pillow is warm and my head itches and my thoughts race
Through the traffic jam and my shoulders are sore no matter how I hold
Them and I can’t sleep on my stomach or my side or my back I’ll just
Have to sleep in a chair and what if I never sleep anymore that I have
Insomnia and this is just the beginning of that and then I look like Christian
Bale in The Machinist and would that be so bad at least I’d lose some weight

Wait

I haven’t flipped to the cool side of the pillow yet.
Ah, yes. That was exactly what I needed.

The final song on my favorite album
I heard it for the first time when I was
Contemplating dropping out of college
I understood it the first time I realized
That I was going nowhere, my cage
Of conformity had sprung up around me
To become nothing more than a condo
Of convalescence as I waited for it all to end

There is a joy to giving up and resigning
Yourself to your flaws, knowing that you
Carry your burdens with the same resilience
That you carry your strength, although the world
May strip away everything you are and leave you
Sweaty and shivering in the sewer, you are still you
In all of your majesty and all of your mania

I had dreams of myself trapped in a mosh pit
The people around me slamming left and right
My glasses flew off, snaked by a surfer’s foot
But I could see so clearly, blurriness no longer
Surrounded my every move and inaction

So when I hear the silence before the outro,
A moment in which I hear my blood in my ears
I feel more in touch with my body than I have ever been
There is this stillness and for once, I am able to see past
Who I am and have some hope for who I may be
Because right now, I am both of those things
Present me is not real, the only real me is
Future me and Past me, regret and potential
Swirled together like a nihilistic Neopolitan

So when the silence hits,
I stop and linger in that feeling
And I wish it could go on forever
Then the snare drum hits
And I become who I’m going to be

When I was young, people said I looked like her
We had the same smile, skin tone, attitude
She would walk the sidewalks with me
Never impatient but always there

She would walk me to the bus
I never said I wanted her to do that
Everyone else walked alone
She knew what I wanted

Every tumble, she picked me up
Every cliff’s edge, she pushed me off it
Every alarm, she pulled me back
Every storm, she sheltered me

I see myself in her now
Your parents become people
And so do you, the same but not
So I walk along the same sidewalks
But my steps are longer and more shaky

I know that there will be one day when I fall
That she won’t be there to catch me
And on that day, I will pick myself up
Knowing that there was a day when she
Reached out for her mother and there was
No hand to catch her.

A slight tinnitus
There is a quiet whine
Below perception

When there is no distraction
When you sit in a silent room
You can hear it, the space left

Behind

I drew you on my leg when I was 16
Hesitant lines with pressure and purloined ink
The stall door was closed and I had gotten tired
Of making that S symbol that skateboarders do
So I took the pen, pulled down my pants and drew
Bic made me do it, I knew that would be my first regret
Open ears listening for the footsteps of a student
Flush, wash my hand, leave the blood-tipped pen behind

You lingered along my thigh, the ink fading over the years
But I never forgot the shame I felt. That shame mutated.
It became guilt. Resentment. Depression. Anger. Lies.
Why should it matter? I’m still sitting in that stall, shorts
Touching seat, hoping that no one will see me through
The gaps between the door and the wall

The only time I see you is when I forget that you’re there
I put on a pair of shorts that is maybe an inch too high
Or a shirt that I used to wear that now I’m too fat for
I see the ink poking out, a reminder to set an alarm
For the time where I can feel like less of an idiot

I hope when I get older, I will see you as a memorial
A sign of how foolish I was with self-hatred, cowardice
Obsession, anxiety, but I feel that you, my homemade tattoo
Will be an eulogy written into my skin, a warning that I never heard
You do not truly change, you just fade away until you become an
Outdated design that no one recognizes anymore or cares to decipher